Tag Archives: politics

Spotlighting China as an example, BBC News reports that “[t]he Food and Agriculture Organization’s food price index is at its highest level since being created in 1990. As food prices rise,” the story adds, “so does poverty.” In just the first few months of this year, some Asian markets have witnessed as much as a 10 percent increase in local food prices, a shift that could potentially plunge almost 65 million people into poverty, according to some estimates.

Though observers and commentators are quick to importune governments to act, making all the usual allegations of “market failure,” the worldwide food problem is a consequence of state intervention.

As law professor Siva Vaidhyanathan observed (regarding intellectual property laws), “Content industries have an interest in creating artificial scarcity by whatever legal and technological means they have at their disposal.” And the same is true of commodity providers whose interest it is to ensure that the nutrition we need to survive comes through them.

If a few giant, state-subsidized and -protected farms, wholesalers and retailers can unilaterally command supply, they can demand in payment whatever capricious price they determine. This propensity — ever more cartelized industry with ever fewer “competitors” — is endemic to state capitalism, but it is alien to genuine free markets.

Free markets divide and moderate market power by denying special protection and privilege and opening competition to a wide assortment of both entrants and methods. Only where potential threats to corporate monopolization are precluded by force of law — through, among other impediments, “safety” and “consumer protection” standards — can today’s “captains of industry” ascend to market dominance.

It is too often assumed that the behemoth conglomerates populating the landscape of corporate capitalism wince at regulations supposedly aimed at health and safety. These rules, however, routinely function to outlaw the farm stand down the street, the small, local producer who can’t afford to jump through the arbitrary and unjustified hoops put up by the political class.

Powerful elites lobby for and welcome new laws that further constrain consumers’ options, preventing you from “taking your business elsewhere.” Today, the price we pay for food is quite detached from the actual costs of producing it. Where the natural pressures of a legitimately free market would push prices downward to reflect a product’s true value, state capitalism’s restrictions on competition allow big business to squeeze out monopoly profits.

In still another departure from real market discipline, taxpayer subsidized transportation means that most people get their food from hundreds or thousands of miles, rather than hundreds or thousands of yards, away. When the price of oil rises, then, so too does the price of food. With so few alternatives to the mass-produced garbage of state-fortified big agribusiness, there’s no real reason to give the powerless consumer anything like a good product at a good price. So much for “consumer protection.”

In places like China and Southeast Asia, governments have dealt away to rich companies land that was cultivated by farmers for thousands of years, land that fed their families and their community. The state and its favorites have no justifiable claim to these lands under any well-founded standard of property, but the ethic of the state has never amounted to much more than might makes right.

The rising costs and shortages of food, a growing crisis all around the world, are a creation of the state, a phenomenon that exists completely apart from anything that could, with a straight face, be called “market forces.” Market anarchists would remove the constraints and coercion from food production and allow voluntary exchange to feed the world.

Rather than pining after some utopian paradise, market anarchists argue that, without state-created scarcities for rich rent-seekers, people around the world be able to provide good food for their families with a fraction of their labor today. We can look to elite members of the political class to “fix” a problem that they created, or we can allow cooperation and genuine free trade on a human scale to fulfill people’s needs.

We’ve seen the way that political solutions work. Now it’s time for society to get out from under the stranglehold of the state.

C4SS News Analyst David D’Amato is a market anarchist and a lawyer with an LL.M. in International Law and Business. His aversion to superstition and all permutations of political authority manifests itself at www.firsttruths.comSource Article

More than a hundred protesters have been killed in Egypt since Tuesday in what is the biggest challenge to President Hosni Mubarak’s three decade rule.

Early Sunday morning 10 people were killed while trying to break into the interior ministry – this brings the total number of dead to some 110, although the official death toll is much lower. Many Egyptians who have taken to the streets have reported being beaten by police following their arrests. Mobile clinics throughout capital Cairo continue to operate. Despite the imposed curfew on January 29, thousands took out in the streets in defiance of authorities.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian military moved into the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh on Sunday. Foreign nationals have been urged to leave the turbulent area as soon as possible.

At the same time thousands of prisoners have broken out of jails around the country. Among them are Muslim extremists and militants. Some of them have reportedly made their way back to Palestine. Egypt country has shut its border with Gaza amid the uprising against the government.

The famed Cairo museum was looted, with mummies ransacked. People in various neighborhoods also say their homes were broken into and goods stolen.

Gunshots were heard on the Cairo University Bridge as protesters clashed with the army there.

Protesters say they are going nowhere until Hosni Mubarak himself steps down. The opposition forces in the country have chosen the ex-head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei to negotiate with tthe President. That is according to the Muslim Brotherhood – Egypt’s largest opposition group. The new opposition leader addressed the protesters on Sunday evening, urging President Mubarak to step down to allow a new phase in the country’s development to begin.

Meanwhile, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has tried to address the protesters’ demands by appointing the country’s first vice-president – the intelligence chief and confidante Omar Suleiman. The new prime minister, Ahmed Shafik, has been tasked with forming a new government. However, protesters still insist President Mubarak should step down.

The international community, particularly European countries and Unites States, have called on Mubarak to implement reforms and to refrain from violence.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague has called for Hosni Mubarak to listen “urgently” to his people.

In a statement made on Saturday, Hague expressed deep concern about the level of violence in the country. “We called on the government to exercise restraint and on the Egyptian people to pursue their legitimate grievances peacefully,” he said. On Friday, British PM David Cameron said that Egypt needed reforms.

There have been protests and demonstrations around the world particularly with Egyptians showing support for their families and friends back home.

Thousands of people gathered outside the Egyptian embassy in London following uprisings in Cairo on January 29. Supporters of the monitored hardliner Islamic group Hizb-ut-Tahrir were calling on the Egyptian leader to step down. Peaceful protests, with doctors and students among the groups, have also been held near the Egyptian embassy in Mayfair to support the demonstrations in Cairo.

According to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks the US government had been planning to topple the Egyptian President for the past three years. The files show Washington had secretly been backing leading figures behind the uprising.

Analysts have pointed fingers at the US, accusing it of trying to change the politics of Egypt’s regime.

“It’s obvious that the US and the UK are behind the recent events in Africa,” said Nikolay Starikov, an author and publisher. “We all know that a major transport oil artery is running through Egypt. The US only benefits from high oil prices, as all global gas and oil trade is carried out in dollars. Thus, the dollar demand is only growing. I don’t believe in spontaneous revolutions – when hundreds of thousands, millions of people come out onto the streets at the same time, taking into account there’s been no serious or immediate change to their standards of living.”

Ken O’Keefe, an activist based in Gaza, said the uprising in Egypt is no surprise, taking into consideration the situation in the country.

“Wherever you oppress people, wherever you deny them basic human rights, wherever the inequity in the distribution of wealth is as perverse as it is in North Africa, the people will eventually rise up and it’s promising to see that people have started the process of shedding off the brutal and corrupt dictate of Mubarak,” he said.

As for the diplomatic cables disclosed by WikiLeaks, O’Keefe said he wouldn’t doubt that the US had been involved, but the blame should still be laid on the Egyptian leadership. He also added that he is not going to give credence to all WikiLeaks cables.

“WikiLeaks has perpetuated all sorts of illusions, including the illusion that Iran is the threat. Iran is not the threat. Israel is the threat, American imperialism is the threat, British complicity and support for those institutions is the threat, not Iran, and WikiLeaks has been instrumental in perpetuating that threat,” O’Keefe said. “Also, the so-called leader of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has marginalized and attempted to ridicule those of us who can see the truth of 9/11. So, I am not going to buy everything that WikiLeaks produces.”

Unrest in Egypt comes weeks after a month of chaos in Tunisia, which saw 80 deaths and the president being toppled before fleeing into exile. But observers insist it is still too soon to say whether the Tunisia’s experience will be replicated in Egypt.

The more one researches mind control, the more one will come to the conclusion that there is a coordinated script that has been in place for a very long time with the goal to turn the human race into non-thinking automatons. For as long as man has pursued power over the masses, mind control has been orchestrated by those who study human behavior in order to bend large populations to the will of a small “elite” group. Today, we have entered a perilous phase where mind control has taken on a physical, scientific dimension that threatens to become a permanent state if we do not become aware of the tools at the disposal of the technocratic dictatorship unfolding on a worldwide scale.

Modern mind control is both technological and psychological. Tests show that simply by exposing the methods of mind control, the effects can be reduced or eliminated, at least for mind control advertising and propaganda. More difficult to counter are the physical intrusions, which the military-industrial complex continues to develop and improve upon.

1. Education — This is the most obvious, yet still remains the most insidious. It has always been a would-be dictator’s ultimate fantasy to “educate” naturally impressionable children, thus it has been a central component to Communist and Fascist tyrannies throughout history. No one has been more instrumental in exposing the agenda of modern education than Charlotte Iserbyt — one can begin research into this area by downloading a free PDF of her book, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, which lays bare the role of Globalist foundations in shaping a future intended to produce servile drones lorded over by a fully educated, aware elite class.

2. Advertising and Propaganda – Edward Bernays has been cited as the inventor of the consumerist culture that was designed primarily to target people’s self-image (or lack thereof) in order to turn a want into a need. This was initially envisioned for products such as cigarettes, for example. However, Bernays also noted in his 1928 book, Propaganda, that “propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.” This can be seen most clearly in the modern police state and the growing citizen snitch culture, wrapped up in the pseudo-patriotic War on Terror. The increasing consolidation of media has enabled the entire corporate structure to merge with government, which now utilizes the concept of propaganda placement. Media; print, movies, television, and cable news can now work seamlessly to integrate an overall message which seems to have the ring of truth because it comes from so many sources, simultaneously. When one becomes attuned to identifying the main “message,” one will see this imprinting everywhere. And this is not even to mention subliminal messaging.

3. Predictive Programming – Many still deny that predictive programming is real. I would invite anyone to examine the range of documentation put together by Alan Watt and come to any other conclusion. Predictive programming has its origins in predominately elitist Hollywood, where the big screen can offer a big vision of where society is headed. Just look back at the books and movies which you thought were far-fetched, or “science fiction” and take a close look around at society today. For a detailed breakdown of specific examples, Vigilant Citizen is a great resource that will probably make you look at “entertainment” in a completely different light.

4. Sports, Politics, Religion – Some might take offense at seeing religion, or even politics, put alongside sports as a method of mind control. The central theme is the same throughout: divide and conquer. The techniques are quite simple: short circuit the natural tendency of people to cooperate for their survival, and teach them to form teams bent on domination and winning. Sports has always had a role as a key distraction that corrals tribal tendencies into a non-important event, which in modern America has reached ridiculous proportions where protests will break out over a sport celebrity leaving their city, but essential human issues such as liberty are giggled away as inconsequential. Political discourse is strictly in a left-right paradigm of easily controlled opposition, while religion is the backdrop of nearly every war throughout history.

5. Food, Water, and Air – Additives, toxins, and other food poisons literally alter brain chemistry to create docility and apathy. Fluoride in drinking water has been proven to lower IQ; Aspartame and MSG are excitotoxins which excite brain cells until they die; and easy access to the fast food that contains these poisons generally has created a population that lacks focus and motivation for any type of active lifestyle. Most of the modern world is perfectly groomed for passive receptiveness — and acceptance — of the dictatorial elite. And if you choose to diligently watch your diet, they are fully prepared to spray the population from the above.

6. Drugs — This can be any addictive substance, but the mission of mind controllers is to be sure you are addicted to something. One major arm of the modern mind control agenda is psychiatry, which aims to define all people by their disorders, as opposed to their human potential. This was foreshadowed in books such as Brave New World. Today, it has been taken to even further extremes as a medical tyranny has taken hold where nearly everyone has some sort of disorder — particularly those who question authority. The use of nerve drugs in the military has led to record numbers of suicides. Worst of all, the modern drug state now has over 25% of U.S. children on mind-numbing medication.

7. Military testing — The military has a long history as the testing ground for mind control. The military mind is perhaps the most malleable, as those who pursue life in the military generally resonate to the structures of hierarchy, control, and the need for unchallenged obedience to a mission. For the increasing number of military personal questioning their indoctrination, a recent story highlighted DARPA’s plans for transcranial mind control helmets that will keep them focused.

8. Electromagnetic spectrum — An electromagnetic soup envelops us all, charged by modern devices of convenience which have been shown to have a direct impact on brain function. In a tacit admission of what is possible, one researcher has been working with a “god helmet” to induce visions by altering the electromagnetic field of the brain. Our modern soup has us passively bathed by potentially mind-altering waves, while a wide range of possibilities such as cell phone towers is now available to the would-be mind controller for more direct intervention.

9. Television, Computer, and “flicker rate”– It’s bad enough that what is “programmed” on your TV (accessed via remote “control”) is engineered; it is all made easier by literally lulling you to sleep, making it a psycho-social weapon. Flicker rate tests show that alpha brain waves are altered, producing a type of hypnosis — which doesn’t portend well for the latest revelation that lights can transmit coded Internet data by “flickering faster than the eye can see.” The computer’s flicker rate is less, but through video games, social networks, and a basic structure which overloads the brain with information, the rapid pace of modern communication induces an ADHD state. A study of video games revealed that extended play can result in lower blood flow to the brain, sapping emotional control. Furthermore, role-playing games of lifelike war and police state scenarios serve to desensitize a connection to reality. One look at the WikiLeaks video Collateral Murder should be familiar to anyone who has seen a game like Call of Duty.

10.Nanobots – From science fiction horror, directly to the modern brain; the nanobots are on the way. Direct brain modification already has been packaged as “neuroengineering.” A Wired article from early 2009 highlighted that direct brain manipulation via fiber optics is a bit messy, but once installed “it could make someone happy with the press of a button.” Nanobots take the process to an automated level, rewiring the brain molecule by molecule. Worse, these mini droids can self-replicate, forcing one to wonder how this genie would ever get back in the bottle once unleashed. Expected date of arrival? Early 2020s.

A concerted effort is underway to manage and predict human behavior so that the social scientists and the dictatorial elite can control the masses and protect themselves from the fallout of a fully awake free humanity. Only by waking up to their attempts to put us to sleep do we stand a chance of preserving our free will.

The House has 39 suspension votes scheduled for Wednesday and possible work final passage of TARP, Jr. (H.R. 5297 – the Small Business Lending Fund Act of 2010), as amended by the Senate for this week. The Senate will debate and vote on the motion to proceed to S.3454, the Department of Defense Authorization bill. There will be no roll call votes during Monday’s session of the Senate, but a vote on cloture is expected on Tuesday.

The big controversy in the Senate this week is over the Defense Authorization Bill. There are the numerous controversial issues that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is seeking to tack on to the measure. The hot button issues of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the DREAM Act and non defense related matters may be added to the legislation during the Amendment process. Expect a critical vote Tuesday on the question of whether the Senate will even proceed to debate on the bill

Extension of the ‘01/’03 Tax Cuts is another issue expected for debate this week, but there is no clarity on whether the Democrats roll out of town to campaign for re-election.

Does President Obama know that he is the best thing to happen to the conservative movement since Ronald Reagan? The New York Times reports that the Obama Administration is considering a campaign against the Tea Party. So much for the lefty talking point that all politics is local in the ‘10 Elections.

President Obama’s political advisers, looking for ways to help Democrats and alter the course of the midterm elections in the final weeks, are considering a range of ideas, including national advertisements, to cast the Republican Party as all but taken over by Tea Party extremists, people involved in the discussion said.

There is no rational explanation for this. It is as if the President is part of the Republican get out the vote effort. This year has proven to be the largest turnout of Republicans in the primary season since the early 70s and Democrats have depressed turn out numbers. This effort on the part of the Obama Administration seems ill conceived.

Then you pick up the Wall Street Journal and the story line gets more surreal. The Wall Street Journal reports that President Obama has decided, mere weeks before the election, that this is a great time to attempt a re-education campaign to convince the American people that ObamaCare is good for them. Has he looked at any recent polling on ObamaCare?

The Obama administration this week plans to revive its pitch for the health-care overhaul, hoping that a slate of consumer-friendly provisions will boost public support before midterm elections. Starting Thursday, insurers officially must adhere to about a half-dozen key changes under the law, including eliminating co-payments for preventive services and allowing children to stay on their parents’ insurance policy until their 26th birthday. Democrats structured the provisions so they would kick in right before the elections, thinking incumbents would have a tangible achievement to promote on the campaign trail.

First of all, the polling for ObamaCare is bad for liberals. The WSJ reports that taxes and jobs are the most important issue for voters. These issues are far more important than a education campaign on the merits of ObamaCare.

But public support for the law continues to lag, with Americans split roughly in half over whether they support it, and the debate over jobs and taxes is squeezing the health law out of Democrats’ election narrative.

Furthermore, Democrats are more likely to campaign against ObamaCare rather than support it. More from the WSJ story:

In recent weeks, insurance companies have started mailing consumers letters informing them of double-digit rate increases starting this month, partially attributing them to the mandates that begin Thursday. That is sowing confusion among consumers, and muddying the Democrats’ contention that the law will rein in sharply rising premiums. The administration is chiding insurers for such increases, saying the new benefits only minimally increase insurers’ costs.

The Obama Administration really does not get it. They are going to attack the Tea Party and campaign in support of ObamaCare. It is as if the Republican National Committee is writing the strategy for the Democrats. Are they sitting in a room and saying, “how can we make this worse?”

As Americans are receiving notices that the rates on insurance is going sky high as a result of ObamaCare, this is the time to push for the idea of repeal of ObamaCare. The law is a disaster for the economy and average Americans.

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There’s no doubt that the Tea Party could get the Republicans in trouble in certain Senate races. In Nevada and Kentucky, for example, Sharron Angle and Rand Paul knocked off candidates preferred by the G.O.P. establishment to win their primaries. Although the FiveThirtyEight model has both Ms. Angle and Mr. Paul as slight favorites in the general election, the races are closer than they otherwise might be.

With Senator Lisa Murkowski’s concession in Alaska late Tuesday night to the insurgent candidate Joe Miller, the Tea Party has now played a role in defeating two Republican incumbents (Robert F. Bennett of Utah is the other). In these two cases, the Tea Party is on much firmer tactical ground.

Nobody would mistake Ms. Murkowski and Mr. Bennett for liberal, but they have not been strict party-line voters. Mr. Bennett, like his colleague Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, had not been averse to gestures of bipartisanship. He teamed with Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a liberal Democrat, to propose a market-based universal health care bill. And Ms. Murkowski, though not an authentically moderate senator like Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, was between the fourth and eighth most liberal Republican in the Senate, according to several rankings systems.

Under certain circumstances, these dalliances with centrism might be something Republicans might tolerate. It is unlikely that a senator significantly more conservative than Ms. Collins or Ms. Snowe could be elected in Maine; instead, the seat would probably default to a Democrat. But Ms. Murkowski and Mr. Bennett hail from Alaska and Utah, two of the most conservative states in the country (although Alaska is somewhat idiosyncratically so), and Republicans there could afford to be picky.

It’s possible to examine this a bit more scientifically. The chart below plots the ideological positions of Republican senators. Along the horizontal axis, I have plotted the partisan orientation of the state, ranging from more liberal (left) to more conservative (right), as according to the Cook Partisan Voting Index. On the vertical axis is a statistical representation of the senators’ voting records, according to their DW-NOMINATE scores. These scores run from -1 (very liberal) to +1 (very conservative); the more conservative senators are plotted toward the top of the chart. Finally, the dashed line represents how conservative we would expect a Republican senator to be, based on the partisan composition of her state. The further below the dashed line that the senator appears, the more liberal he or she is, relative to the state. Those far below the line, from a Republican point of view, are arguably not pulling their weight.
Five Republicans stand out as being especially far below the line — that is, they are more liberal than you would typically expect a Republican from their state to be. The list includes George V. Voinovich of Ohio, who is retiring, and Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, along with Mr. Hatch. And, sure enough, we also see Ms. Murkowski and Mr. Bennett.

Should Mr. Miller — along with Mr. Bennett’s successor as the G.O.P. nominee in Utah, Mike Lee — succeed in winning in November, the Republicans will have replaced somewhat conservative senators with very conservative ones without having put much at risk. That outcome appears nearly certain in Mr. Lee’s case, although it is somewhat more tenuous for Mr. Miller, who was only 8 points ahead of the Democratic nominee, Scott McAdams, in an independent poll earlier this week. Still, in an election cycle that is shaping up to be an outstanding one for Republicans, this is a healthy risk to take.

Democrats, meanwhile, mounted serious primary challenges to three of their incumbents: Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Michael Bennet of Colorado (the challenge succeeded only in Mr. Specter’s case). None of these quite fit the paradigm. Mr. Specter had begun to vote as a liberal, but switched to the Democratic Party only last year. Ms. Lincoln, while unabashedly moderate, hails from a red state; the equivalent case on the Republican side would not be challenging Ms. Murkowski, but rather someone like Ms. Collins. (The challenge to Ms. Lincoln had other strategic merits, like her low approval ratings.) And Mr. Bennet had been appointed rather than elected, which made his primary challenge somewhat routine. But if Democrats are looking for examples of which incumbents to challenge in future election cycles, the Tea Party has just provided them with a couple of good ones.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 1, 2010

An earlier version of this post referred to Senator Michael Bennet of Utah. He represents Colorado.View Source Article

Convinced beyond reason and data that the American people find delicious the sandwich of socialism being force fed down their throats, the left does not understand what is happening in this country and what is coming.

In fact, the media does not understand what is happening either. Largely socializing with the same elites and liberals who are fomenting unrest in the country, the media is missing warning signs that revolutionary conduct amongst middle class conservative and independent voters is at hand.

Mind you, it is not revolution with bayonet, but revolution with ballot and advocacy. But it is building. It will come. And if left unsatiated by November’s elections, something worse will come.

There is a growing disconnect in this country between average Americans and the largely center-left political elite. That disconnect is what will destroy the Democrats in November and, should the Republicans offer no better, cause potentially cataclysmic change in the republic.

Consider the Rasmussen surveys of late:

86% of voters believe there should b “limits on what the federal government can do.” 54% of the political class1
disagrees.
84% of mainstream voters think the country is headed in the wrong direction. 67% of the political class think the country is headed in the right direction.
75% of mainstream voters believe the free market works better than government at regulating the economy. 44% of the political class prefer government control.
56% of mainstream voters want Obamacare repealed. 97% of the political class want it kept.
52% of mainstream voters believe increased government spending is bad for the economy. A majority of the political class disagrees.
Then consider gay marriage. More than three-quarters of the states and a majority of the people in each of those states have prohibited gay marriage. But one judge in California has, through his own “fact finding” decided gender no longer, after 5000 years, plays any role in marriage.

There is a great and growing divide between those who govern and those who are governed. But those who govern are forgetting that they only govern by the consent of those who are governed. That consent is being revoked.

As conservatives see the nation piece by piece ruined by socialist policies and the same left-wing values that destroyed the nuclear family, it is time to consider Article V of the Constitution.

Many conservatives are scared of Article V and the potential of a run away constitutional convention. They would rather see the left amend the constitution in the courts than actually amend the constitution to stop the left because of the fear of the great unknown.

But what about Dan Greenberg’s idea. States should demand a constitutional convention to consider one amendment: amending Article V to make clear that two-thirds of the states can call for a convention to consider just one amendment.

Arkansas legislator Dan Greenberg recognizes that Congress is unlikely to propose constitutional amendments to limit its own power. The legislatures of two-thirds of the states can bypass Congress by calling for a convention to propose amendments. Greenberg notes that some people worry about the prospect of a “runaway” convention, but thinks that political and legal constraints could prevent that from happening — and that the first convention should consider an amendment to Article V that would explicitly permit state legislatures to limit a convention to the consideration of a single amendment or eliminate the requirement that the requisite number of states must call a convention in order to propose an amendment. It would be in state legislators’ interest to propose and ratify such an amendment because revitalizing the states’ ability to propose amendments to the Constitution would “enhance their power in dealing with Congress.”

That would alleviate the fear of a runaway convention and let the states start reining in Congress by, in Thomas Jefferson’s words, “binding [them] down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.” Any amendment put forward at a convention specifically designed around clarifying that conventions can be restricted to single amendments would be roundly mocked and opposed.

If we do not restore balance and the elite center-left politicians in charge keep spoon feeding us unwanted socialism, we will find ourselves at a point we dare not go.

To alleviate the pressure, we must start petitioning state legislatures to amend the constitution and reassert state power against what is supposed to be a limited federal government.

Rasmussen provides this description of the “Political Class”:

The Political Class Index is based on three questions. All three clearly address populist tendencies and perspectives, all three have strong public support, and, for all three questions, the populist perspective is shared by a majority of Democrats, Republicans and those not affiliated with either of the major parties. We have asked the questions before, and the results change little whether Republicans or Democrats are in charge of the government.

In many cases, the gap between the Mainstream view and the Political Class is larger than the gap between Mainstream Republicans and Mainstream Democrats.

The questions used to calculate the Index are:

– Generally speaking, when it comes to important national issues, whose judgment do you trust more – the American people or America’s political leaders?

– Some people believe that the federal government has become a special interest group that looks out primarily for its own interests. Has the federal government become a special interest group?

– Do government and big business often work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors?

To create a scale, each response earns a plus 1 for the populist answer, a minus 1 for the political class answer, and a 0 for not sure.

Those who score 2 or higher are considered a populist or part of the Mainstream. Those who score -2 or lower are considered to be aligned with the Political Class. Those who score +1 or -1 are considered leaners in one direction or the other.

In practical terms, if someone is classified with the Mainstream, they agree with the Mainstream view on at least two of the three questions and don’t agree with the Political Class on any.View Source Article